In another indication of Microsoft’s floundering influence in the smartphone market, the Redmond firm has axed “dozens” more workers from what used to be Nokia’s phone business.
Microsoft originally agreed to acquire that part of the Finnish tech giant back in 2013, but the move has since resulted in huge layoffs. There have now been even more redundancies, according to Finnish newspaper Helsingen Sanomat.
The report, paraphrased from Finnish into English by The Register, claims that the Lumia marketing teams are getting hit hard. The staff trimming is, according to the paper, “due to the fact that the company’s phone business is in deep trouble and are forced to cut costs”.
Though Microsoft had initially took on about 32,000 Nokia employees in 2014, 12,000 were soon let go, and another 7,800 – including 2,300 workers in Finland – followed in June 2015. The latest round of layoffs, then, actually seems quite forgiving in comparison.
The negative critical reaction to the recently-released Lumia 950 and 950 XL phones, among the first handsets to come with the maligned Windows 10 Mobile, has just rubbed salt into the wound for Microsoft – which, predicts IDC, will still have only just above 2% of the mobile market by 2019.
